Trips wants to become a digital travel album, where users can upload their photos and videos. The question is whether the app can compete with Instagram.
Trips from Lonely Planet
The still hugely popular travel book publisher, Lonely Planet, has released a new iOS app. Trips is intended for people who like to travel and want to share visual reports of it with others. For users, this provides a kind of guide app, but with information and images from other app users.
After installing the app you can log in via Facebook, Twitter or Google. Logging in is not required, but then you can only look around in the app and post nothing yourself. You can then immediately start following people (and people you). Travel reports from others can be seen on the main screen. It is striking that the app is very visually set, with large photos and beautiful fonts. In addition, there is enough space for text to complete your travelogue. Its layout resembles the minimalist blogging platform Medium.
Not very social yet
Although you can follow people, it is otherwise not so bad with the social functions. You can reward trips with hearts and share them on social media, but it is not possible to respond. There is an ‘Activity’ window which will show notifications you have received. The likes that you have distributed yourself are on your own profile page, where you will also find an overview of your own travel reports.
Make a travelogue
Making a travel report is done via the blue button at the bottom of the screen. Then select the photos you want to use. You can set one of them as a cover photo, the rest will be included in the report. It is possible to place a title and subtitle, add an intro and underneath there is space to tell more about your photos. The app also loads a map with your location so that other people can refer to the report when they are there.
Lonely Planet’s Trips app is for true travel enthusiasts, who don’t have enough space on Instagram to share their story. The question is whether Trips can attract enough users, also because the social functions are still a bit sparse. But as long as a niche of travelers gets to work with it, it can become a nice reference book on users’ travel.